Monday, September 24, 2007

The Great Escape

Last Thursday began like a normal morning, I woke up at 5:00, had a shower, checked my e-mail, had coffee and breakfast. At 6:45 I go out to feed the animals, but oddly I don’t see the horses standing by the gate as they normally do. I have the pastures sectioned off so we can rest parts of the pasture and let the grass grow. I figured they somehow got through my barriers and made their way to the upper pastures. I walk up there and they are no where in sight.

I look around and saw that they went through the only section of the fence that wasn’t electrified. OK, where were they? There is lots of green grass on the lawn, but they weren’t there. I hiked up a quarter mile to the back of the property; not there either.

I got in the car and drove down to two other farms down the road where horses live to the South; no sign of them. I drove a half mile North where there are a lot of fields that horses would just love to be in; not there either.

Then the phone rang. It was a neighbor about a mile north of us. Our horses were in her pasture. We’ve only ridden that way once and that was months ago. I have no idea why they traveled up there. I would have figured they would have gone where there were larger gatherings of horses in a direction they are familiar with, but this neighbor has only one horse and there are no other horses between here and there.

I know the ring leader was our mare. She is an escape artist. She is able to open latched gates. We have since learned to latch and chain gates. She had even figured out that I had one gate where I didn’t oppose the hinge bolts and she put her head through the bars of the gate and lifted the damn thing off the hinge and got out.

So this weekend I’m going to hot wire the remaining areas where I once thought a psychological barrier would do. Maybe I should put a GPS tracking device on them. Two dark horses roaming a dark country road at night is never a good thing.

The reason they went to that neighbor's house is simple ... they knew the single horse there was lonely, and wanted visitors.

One of my uncles once had a "tracking horse". Horse was trained and tracked better than most dogs. Uncle used to hunt cougars with it. He'd sit in the saddle and let the horse track the big cat. Of course, the odds finally caught up with them and a "cat" took the horse with it.

Last I heard, uncle was working with a SAR posse to train their horses to help track lost hikers/etc.

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Once, SH and I were driving home on a road just outside of Yuba City, when, off to the side, in the dark, our headlights caught a huge horse carcass. I am so glad your horses are okay! I know once they're back in, it's good for a chuckle, but you had to have been sweating it up to that point.